What's Next?

How to proceed when you’re not excited.

I’ve recently quit vaping. I’ll hold for the applause. I’m assuming it’s going to be a Venice Film Festival style fourteen-minute-standing-ovation, but I’m happy to wait. I understand. Not all heroes quit vaping.

I vaped all day, every day. The Juul was my nicotine distributor of choice. Much like cigarettes, I didn’t just love the feeling of smoking my Juul, but I loved the look of it. I loved the smooth, compact design. I loved blowing clouds of smoke (usually into my mother’s face while we watched old episodes of Law & Order together).

Vaping was something I did not only for pleasure, but to pass the time. I’m a freelance writer, and I’m always waiting for news. Waiting for the dopamine hit. Waiting for -Insert Important Name Here- to read my writing. Waiting for the check. Waiting for the call. Waiting for…what’s next. And while I waited, I’d vape.

I’m reminded of being in high school, already a burgeoning alcoholic at the young age of seventeen. On a Friday or Saturday night, my friends and I were usually in an unsupervised location, drinking whatever cheap alcohol we had begged someone to buy us. My friends were bonding with one another, laughing, telling stories. But I didn’t want that. I wanted whatever was next. Where were we going? Were there going to be guys there? I needed to know! (Mainly because I had a boyfriend who I was happy to break up with over voicemail should guys be there).

I wanted to go to the next room, I wanted to play the next song, I wanted the next drink, I wanted to find the next party, the next hit of something. Whatever I was feeling, good, bad, nothing at all, I wanted to feel something else, something new. If someone had told me, in those banal moments, that the future was bright: I would travel the world, I would meet all my heroes, I would write for a living…well I would be more impatient then grateful.

When? When would I get to this next place?

I wanted to go now.

Disgraced pedophile, Drake, once rapped, “There's times when I wish I was/where I was/back when I used to wish I was here.”

I do not identify. And I don’t believe Drake does, either. I don’t miss being in college, or being poor in my twenties, or having less than four dogs. Just like I don’t think Drake misses being on Degrassi.

What I miss is the future. I long for the next phase in my life like the High School Quarterback longs for his glory days. And I’ve planned my future so meticulously, it’s just as clear as my past. I’ve planned it carefully, to control for any surprises, and to draw it closer, faster. I froth at the mouth for it, like a dog sitting politely for a treat. I meditate on it. I pray for it.

But mostly, I simply wait for it. I sit on my couch, answering emails, sending follow up texts, and I wait for the future to land in front of me.

The funny thing is, I’ve never felt like I’ve arrived there. There have been spectacular moments, where I felt like my life may be finally beginning, but the future was always that dangled carrot, just within arm’s reach.

I have never relaxed. I have always felt that I wasn’t there yet.

In some ways I think that is the secret to my success (am I successful? TBD). I have never felt done. I have always felt like there was more to wish for, more to take care of, more to fear.

See, as much as I long for the future, I’m just as much scared that it will disappoint me. And I wait for the dopamine hit, in an effort for my fears to be proven wrong.

In high school, I once made my friends come with me to a party in Topanga (never a clutch move). It was the only party I’d heard of happening that night, and I thought there would be more to do there. Maybe more alcohol? Something else.

The Topanga party was horrible. A creepy dad was present, a common fixture at teen parties, and he found a dead deer in the woods, took it to an outdoor table, in the middle of his daughters party, and sliced it open, exposing its guts.

“This is the worst party I’ve ever been to” My friend told me, in despair. It was hard to argue. Watching roadkill be dissected was not the exciting future I had envisioned for us. Yet here we were.

I’m terrified to wait my entire life, only to find out that my future is a party in Topanga. I’m terrified, that the next place is not the better place. That in fact, looking around, my current life is as good as I’ll ever have it.

As I write my navel-gazing, self-centered wonderings about my future, I’m aware that this is one of the worst times in human history and there are millions of people with very real problems and in very real pain, who are wondering if they have a future, at all.

But this is how I pass my days, how I think, and I have to assume I’m not alone. Sometimes I wonder if some of us plan our futures so thoughtfully because the future of the world is so…questionable. Meaning, we have to question if humanity survives, at all. With such existential dread looming in the air, it’s nice to be sure of some things, even if it’s only a West Elm coffee table you plan on purchasing once that script fee comes through.

I had to quit vaping because I have a hand surgery coming up. The hand surgery is for aesthetic purposes, to improve the appearance of one of my scars. I’m cautiously optimistic. I hope it’s my last surgery.

But I know my hand will never look the same as it once did. Two of my fingers will never bend at the knuckle again. In some sense, I will never “arrive”. But I’ve become sick of waiting for my body to be fixed. I’ve come to realize, that it won’t be, and I have to settle for simply, getting better.

My rare experience of such acceptance reminds me of a quote from a Joanne Kryger poem:

“… That we go on, the world
always goes on, breaking us with its changes
until our form, exhausted, runs true.”

Maybe the future is exciting, and maybe it breaks us, and maybe it’s a little of both. Waiting is exhausting. I wish I could still Juul to help the time pass, while I sit here and hope.

But what to hope for is not just the fruits of my labor, but a different self, someone peeling off her affected personalities like dirty clothes, until she’s just here, broken hand and all, running true.